Things started getting rough as we get closer to the finals on the one vs one championship, now players barely crack a smile and it seems they were very committed to just winning their matchups. Yesterday though, because it was the semifinals we expected more close games and, maybe games even getting drag on to the 100 cs, that was not the case though, going against all the speculations, we got to see short games and a lot of action!
For the first match of the day, we had the North American Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg up against the Southeast Asia representative Park “Jisu” Jin-Cheol.
Previously, Bjergsen said that Jisu only got to the semifinals because “he got lucky”, now he has to prove himself right and win the matchup versus Jisu.
On the other hand, the Korean Kim “Pray” Jong-in was up against the Chinese Jian “Uzi” Zi-Hao, and yet again, we got to see Koreans facing Chinese. It was a hard matchup for the Pray side, Uzi has been doing so well throughout the entire championship, not to mention he is the winner of last year’s one vs one championship, so he is undoubtedly going to do everything he can to defend his title.
On the other side though, Pray is the last man standing as for the Korean region and it was ri.ght the Chinese that knocked Koreans out of the competition. Pray definitely might want some revenge for the Korea. Now he is carrying the weight of an entire region.
Bjergsen versus Jisu
First thing Bjergsen did was to ban Jisu’s champion pool, essentially, Jisu has been playing champions like Olaf or Pantheon and constantly going for all-ins, as a result, Bjergsen made sure to ban out some of these champions.
Jisu had to stick with the Draven if he wanted to keep his aggressive playstyle, and that’s what he did. Everything seemed pretty balanced until the point where Bjergsen on Zoe picked up ignite with Spell Thief and managed to all-in Jisu to the death.
On the second game, though, Jisu had the chance to choose his well-known Pantheon, but he ended up going for the classic Phase-Rush Tham Kench with Ghost and Heal, whereas Bjergsen chose for something safer, going with the Taliyah.
Jisu couldn’t afford too many pokes coming from the North America Representative, and because Bjergsen was putting in just to much pressure, Jisu had to go back early on. As soon as Jisu took level 6 on his Tahm Kench though, he went for an all-in which almost resulted in a kill, but he ended up taking too much tower shots and died before Bjergsen.
2 vs 0 for NA, and now Bjergsen is going the finals to try and reclaim his crown.
Uzi versus Pray
Unfortunately for Pray his Kalista was banned in all the games, but he seemed to have an ace up his sleeves.
In Game One, Pray showcased an outstanding performance on Zoe, as soon as he got to level 3 he went for an all-in, landing all the skills and picking up Barrier with the Spell Thieve, he managed to come out on top of Uzi’s Varus.
In the second game though, he picked Zoe again and tried to do the same thing, the only thing he may not have noticed was that he was only in level 2 when he tried to all-in, so even though one of the minions did drop ignite he could not pick it up and finish off Uzi’s Syndra.
For game three, Uzi picked Varus and Pray chose for Zoe once again, it was indeed a mirror of the match 1, except that Uzi made up a different strategy, using his pokes intelligently, he was able to come out on top and maintain himself alive on the competition.
On this Sunday Night, we get to see the electrifying finals between Uzi and Bjergsen. While Bjergsen is trying to reclaim his title, Uzi is trying to defend it. Who is going to come out on top?
Image via Riot Games.